So I had this idea.
Well my kid had an idea, and I realized it was the same idea I had when I was a kid.
Can we put a camera on the front of my toy train so I could see what it sees?
He’s six, I’m thirty four years older than him. Today was the day. So we did it.
Technology has changed a LOT since the 80s. For the cost of a domestic beer at an uninspired restaurant you can own a tiny little computer. For a couple more beers you can own a a little camera you can connect directly to the computer with a delicate and annoying ribbon cable. Add power using one of those USB phone charger bricks you probably have littering your junk drawer, backpack, or purse.
What do you now have? a fully mobile computer capable of being strapped to a toy train.
That computer? it even has wifi, GPIO pins, and an ARM processor I’m kind of smitten with.
Could i have gone out and purchased a GoPro? sure.
But that’s boring problem solving. I hate boring problem solving.
I wanted to figure this out using crap I already had. I didn’t want an elegant solution. I wanted a solution that involved found objects. I wanted a solution that would involve some toil.
Not sure if you’ve noticed, but throwing money at a problem generally leaves you bored and uninspired. Oh cool you paid someone to solve something. How long does that joy last?
Lashing a bunch of shit together and finding an answer leaves you inspired to do it again.
We begin
The hardware is simple. It’s a tiny computer with a camera strapped to the front. It’s taped to the train using electrical tape cause it was the only tape I had in my office. It’s not robust, it’s not elegant. It is (for the moment) functional. That’s what counts.
Ok that settled, I spent 3 hours trying to figure out why the camera wouldn’t work. I swapped absolutely every hardware component out, tried different distributions of the operating system, cursed a lot, got “help” from my kid, and eventually solved it. Honestly I’m not sure how, it just works now so I’m good with that.
Why are you doing this?
I already explained this. That is a stupid question. Find something you are interested in doing. Make it happen using found objects.
What did you end up with?
It’s a camera on the front a train that records what the train sees. But let’s not settle for that.
This is also a fully functional linux computer driving the tracks. You could quite literally host a website on it if you didn’t anticipate much traffic— and the comedy of hosting a physically moving web server brings my particular flavor of brain great joy.
The GPIO pins are physical contact points software can control, so in theory I could hook those up to the train’s very basic circuitry and control the trains movement.
I want the computer to control the train.
Enjoy the process.
